Along with Patti Smith’s Horses and The Ramones’ self-titled debut album, The Voidoids’ Blank Generation rounds out the holy trinity of American punk albums that defined the parameters and aesthetics for what would follow in both the punk and alt-rock genres since the release of those albums and continue to exert influence to this day except that Blank Generation is very much the dark horse of the lot. While Horses plays like a direct guide for every female songstress with an artistic bent (and how many don’t claim to be that?) since 1976 from Tori Amos to Beth Ditto to Kim Gordon among a galaxy of others and The Ramones’ influence is easy to trace because no one has really seen fit to deviate from the formula that it set forth upon its release, The Voidoids’ music is more eclectic and the band’s debut throws those seeds to the proverbial wind; spawning as many new and unique sounds that became career-long pursuits for other bands as there are tracks on the album.
With that information in hand, it suddenly makes perfect sense why Blank Generation is as essential an album as Horses, Ramones or even Velvet Underground’s Peel Slowly and See. Hell was the blueprint for punk, indie and alternative fashion for the next 25 years (in Hell's case, it was a matter of necessity—he was pitifully broke), and from a sonic standpoint, Richard Hell was responsible for writing the proverbial instruction manuals as well. “Down at the Rock and Roll Club,” for example, plays like the how-to that Paul Westerberg and The Replacements must have read in order to learn how to play fast and loose and, at the end when Hell’s vocal breaks up and goes flat into a defeated, attenuated yelp, Westerberg was clearly taking notes. Elsewhere, Hell outlines the malaise and dissatisfaction that the Seattle alt-rock community—particularly Nirvana—would turn platinum fifteen years later with “Liars Beware,” The Lemonheads would lift the stop-and-start balladry of “Betrayal Takes Two” for a different cover (“Baby’s Home” on last year’s self-titled return) and “Love Comes In Spurts” blueprints the wry sarcasm and sexual ineptitude that SoCal punks like The Descendants and The Offspring would base their entire recorded output upon. Of course, the one song that everyone knows is the most commercialized—“Blank Generation”—and it has appeared on a multitude of soundtracks and so on, but taken in its original context here, illustrates again how innovative the band really was. While musically only a rewrite of “Stray Cat Strut” (which got used by Green Day for “Hitchin’ A Ride” too), the song is singularly representative of Hell’s unique and peerless lyrical style. Often singing outside of any recognizable meter and never rhyming, it’s very easy for Hell’s imagery to get lost (the one of the attending nurse at Hell’s birth adjusting her garter before “the doctor grabbed my throat and yelled, ‘God’s consolation prize!’” is one of the most potent but also one of the easiest to miss) but, for those that catch them, they somehow offer a romantic but nihilist portrait of a gifted writer first and songwriter second.
The Voidoids only released one proper full-length album following Blank Generation, Destiny Street, in 1982 (two long-since out-of-print cassettes, R.I.P. and Funhunt were also released, but good luck finding them), before Richard Hell went back to his literary roots—occasionally doing some journalism, reading and publishing poetry, editing a small, NYC-based literary 'zine and taking a few small cinematic turns on the silver screen (including an appearance in Desperately Seeking Susan)—he also returned to music briefly to record and album with Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth in Dim Stars. However, such dalliances can be viewed as a series of tangents and perhaps that’s the point: because he’s never attempted to make it a long-term career focus, Hell’s music has remained vital. The Voidoids couldn’t really have continued as they were for the simple reason that, with time, the music would have ventured into the realm of self-parody and rightly forgotten as a result. Blank Generation remains special because it runs lean with a street punk’s hunger and a poet’s sense of aesthetics. It couldn’t have lasted long, but Blank Generation made the impact it was designed to and the ripples still surge through rock and punk as bands like Fall Out Boy discover that “it ain’t a scene, it’s a goddamned arms race,” and set it to something that’ll hook like a fisherman’s gaffe into your brain.
Purchase BLANK GENERATION 12-track expanded CD version of 1977 album.
For more on Richard Hell, click here: www.richardhell.com
